No More Learning

15.
And this is Hell--and in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other;
They are damned by one another, _220
By none other are they damned.

16.
'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns'! (1)
Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams, _225
They are mines of poisonous mineral.

17.
Statesmen damn themselves to be
Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls
To the auction of a fee;
Churchmen damn themselves to see _230
God's sweet love in burning coals.

18.
The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their broken hearts to endure _235
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.

19.
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,--not means for being blessed,--
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed _240
Squeeze less than they before possessed.

20.
And some few, like we know who,
Damned--but God alone knows why--
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven; _245
In which faith they live and die.

21.
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no
Must indifferently sicken;
As when day begins to thicken, _250
None knows a pigeon from a crow,--

22.
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers; _255
Lovers, haters, worst and best;

23.
All are damned--they breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there _260
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In throned state is ever dwelling.


PART 4.

SIN.

1.
Lo. Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil's service!
And the misjudging world would swear _265
That every man in service there
To virtue would prefer vice.

2.
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.
Men oftentimes prepare a lot _270
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.

3.
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when they came within the belt _275
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.

4.
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting _280
To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.